


Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

by flutterflap



Series: Into the Spin [1]
Category: Lucifer (TV)
Genre: Another post-2x18 fic, Chloe Decker Finds Out, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Forgiveness, Friendship, Hurt/Comfort, Protective Chloe Decker, Trust, background Laze, mostly comfort, slightly delirious Lucifer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-02
Updated: 2017-07-02
Packaged: 2018-11-22 11:53:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11379654
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flutterflap/pseuds/flutterflap
Summary: She had given him the day. A day to reappear with some improbable excuse or evasive half-truth; a day to show up unharmed and prove once again that her trust in him had been misplaced, but she wouldn’t care because he was all right.





	Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine

**Author's Note:**

> I of course needed to take a stab at post-2x18 fic. Here it is.
> 
> The title and epigraphs come from the poem “Wild Geese” by Mary Oliver. You can read the whole thing (and hear a recording of Oliver reading it) here: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/09/24/mary-oliver-reads-wild-geese/

_You do not have to be good._  
_You do not have to walk on your knees_  
_For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting._

***

Chloe sat at her desk in the precinct and listened to Lucifer’s message for what felt like the thousandth time. _I’m done hiding. . . . No more going backward._ It had been late when he’d left it; she’d already been asleep, exhausted after, well, everything. There was the normal adrenaline rush of chasing down leads, tracking a suspect against the clock, and then on top of that Lucifer’s strangeness (stranger than normal) and the realization that he’d been protecting his mother—or protecting Chloe, if she took what he said on the pier at face value—protecting them both, perhaps. All the unanswered questions about Lucifer and his family, the unexplained events at the pier, and why Charlotte Richards suddenly couldn’t seem to remember anything of the last six months.

And Lucifer had simply vanished. Again.

_I’m coming over now to tell you the truth about me._

She’d gotten the message yesterday morning and had left her bedroom expecting to find him asleep on the couch, or in the kitchen making omelettes, but the house had been empty. Trixie was with Dan, Maze had spent the night at the hospital with Linda. Her calls and texts to him went unanswered all day.

She had given him the day. A day to reappear with some improbable excuse or evasive half-truth; a day to show up unharmed and prove once again that her trust in him had been misplaced, but she wouldn’t care because he was all right.

A small, treacherous voice told her to let it go. This wasn’t the first time he’d vanished after a crisis, after all, and the only thing caring about him seemed to get her was hurt. But she knew that voice too well to listen to it. It was the voice that had kept her in a failing marriage for too long, the voice that had made her try to please her mother when what she really wanted was to follow in her father’s footsteps. And it was wrong. Lucifer had vanished before, yes, but the last time it had been without a word. This time he had left her a message with a promise. The truth. All of it. 

Lucifer didn’t break promises. Which meant something was wrong.

A shadow fell over her desk and she looked up to see Dan standing over her, looking concerned. “No word?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No one’s heard from him.” He’d been at the hospital right before he’d called her, but neither Linda nor Maze had heard from him since. She’d managed to track down Amenadiel—through Dan, of all people—but he was preoccupied, upset about Charlotte, and waved her concerns away. Lucifer would turn up, he said. He always did.

Dan shrugged uncomfortably, looking caught somewhere between concern for her and anger at Lucifer. “Maybe he, you know, decided he had to go blow off steam.” He didn’t add _like last time,_ but the words hung unspoken between them.

Chloe shook her head again. “I don’t think so.” She hadn’t let him listen to the message—it felt too private, too personal—so she just spread her hands and said, “This is different.” 

He looked skeptical, but didn’t argue. Instead he asked, “Can I help?”

“Not right now, I don’t think.” She pushed her chair back, making a decision. “I’m going to trace his phone, see what that turns up. I’ll let you know if I need anything.”

***

The trace on his phone took Chloe to the hospital, which made hope bubble up in her chest, but it burst when she found only Maze in Linda’s room, dozing in the chair beside her bed while Linda watched the television mounted on the wall, their hands clasped loosely together on the edge of the bed between them. Chloe tapped lightly on the door.

“Hey,” Linda said, her face breaking into into a smile when she saw her. Maze stirred, frowning blearily at her. She blinked and rubbed her neck with her free hand, not letting go of Linda’s hand.

Chloe smiled back. “Hey. How are you feeling?”

“Oh, you know.” Linda shrugged as much as her injuries would allow. “Kinda like I got beaten up by—” she broke off, exchanging a glance with Maze that Chloe couldn’t quite interpret. “—a very determined woman,” she finished. She smiled again. “Better, though.”

“I’m glad.” Chloe hesitated. “Lucifer didn’t come by this morning, did he?”

“No.” Worry replaced the smile on Linda’s face. “You still haven’t heard from him?”

“I traced his phone here. I was hoping . . .” She trailed off, leaning against the doorway. He was really and truly missing. She was going to stand here for a moment, she thought, and feel sorry for herself. And then she she was going to try to find Lucifer’s phone, his car, review the video surveillance around the hospital for the last two days, and put out an APB on him. 

Maze sat up straighter, fully alert now. She looked from Linda to Chloe and back, visibly torn. Linda squeezed her hand and then released it. “Go,” she said. “I’ll be fine here.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure. Go find him. Let me know when you get him back, okay?”

Maze closed her eyes for a moment, her expression pained. “Okay.” She bent and gently kissed Linda’s forehead. When she straightened, her mouth was set in a determined line. She grabbed Chloe’s arm on her way out the door. “Come on, Decker.”

Chloe raised her eyebrows. “ ‘Come on’ where?”

“Where do you think? I’m coming with you to find Lucifer and save his ass.”

***

Someone had turned Lucifer’s phone in at reception, its screen shattered but the battery still half-full. The last call he’d made was to Chloe, two nights ago, a little before midnight.

“Damn,” Chloe breathed. Her hand closed around it convulsively. Outside, she and Maze scanned the area where the security guard said it had been found, by the main entrance of the hospital. There wasn’t any blood, that was good, though it didn’t mean he wasn’t hurt, just that he hadn’t been bleeding when he’d left. Or been taken. Something glittered on the concrete in the shadow of one of the columns on the covered walkway. Chloe bent to pick it up, held out her hand for Maze to see. It was a cufflink, silver set with a polished black onyx. They both recognized it as his.

“Fuck.” Maze bit the word off. He had to go get himself into trouble now, after everything that had happened, when Linda had nearly _died_ and all Maze wanted to do was take care of her, make sure she knew she wasn’t alone because she didn’t have anyone else. She spun on her heel and savagely kicked the column, letting a growl escape her throat. 

Chloe pulled out her phone. “I’m going to call it in. Get officers out looking.”

“Wait,” Maze said. Chloe paused, her thumb poised over the touchscreen of her phone, the other hand closed around his cufflink. Maze took a deep breath. _You exist to protect me, to know where I am and who I’m with at all times, whether you want to or not._ Lucifer’s taunt had been an exaggeration, calculated to piss her off, but it was true they were connected, even if that connection had weakened, even if she hadn’t drawn on it in months. “I can find him,” she said. 

“How?”

She hesitated, trying to think of the best answer that wouldn’t invite more questions. “You know how Lucifer has his—what do you call it, his eye mojo thing?” Chloe nodded. Maze shrugged. “Well, this is mine. I can . . . sort of sense him.”

Chloe’s eyes narrowed. “How?” she asked again.

Maze scowled. “It’s hard to explain.” It wasn’t, not really, but it was Lucifer’s job to explain it, Lucifer’s secret to tell, even if part of was hers. “Do you trust me?”

Chloe didn’t hesitate. “Of course.” Puzzled, but willing.

“Okay.” Maze closed her eyes and took another deep breath, trying to calm her anger and anxiety. She had walled off her connection to him, needing separation, space to find herself in this world. She let it fall away, reached out tentatively to find him.

It was different, here on Earth. In Hell she was like a compass needle, he her true north. Here, there was interference. Noise. There were other forces pulling on them both. Humanity, desire. Love. She thought of Linda and her throat ached. She forced herself to concentrate; she thought she only managed it because Linda would want her to. She wanted him back safe, too. 

It took a few moments, but finally she sensed him, distantly. Alive. Alone. Unmoving. She felt searing heat, bright light. She opened her eyes, blinking in the sudden brightness. “North,” she said. “And east. Someplace hot.”

Chloe frowned. “That could be anywhere. That’s the entire Mojave Desert.”

“I’ll be able to be more specific when we get closer.” Maze folded her arms across her chest to keep from lashing out. “Just trust me, Decker. I can find him.” Her voice trembled, just a little, making her clench her jaw. He had to be all right. Linda had to be all right. She couldn’t lose either of them. She wouldn’t.

Chloe searched her face. “Okay,” she agreed. “But I’m putting a BOLO out on him, too. Just in case.”

***

They stopped on the edge of town for gas and supplies—bottles of water, snacks, a few sandwiches, at Chloe’s insistence. If Maze had had her way, they would have driven away with a car full of candy and chips. As she merged back onto the highway, Chloe ventured, “So, this . . . ability. Does that have to do with what Lucifer wanted to tell me?”

Maze nodded shortly. She rummaged in the shopping bag at her feet and pulled out a handful of twizzlers. She handed one to Chloe.

“But you can’t tell me.” Chloe took the candy from her and bit into it.

“It’s better if you hear it from him.” Maze looked out the window, watching as L.A.’s suburbs dwindled into scrubland. “At least he talked to me about it, this time,” she added, half to herself.

 _I want to tell you everything. Why strange things sometimes happen around me._ Chloe pressed her lips together and focused on driving, pushing away the creeping sense that she already knew what he had been going to tell her. That he had told her many, many times already. _Find him. Find him first, then think about that._ A man flying through a glass wall. Six bullets hitting him in the back while he shielded her, shaking them off like they were no more than paintballs. She reached for the radio, scanned through the stations, but there was nothing she could stand to listen to. 

“Still northeast?” she asked.

“Still northeast.”

They drove on in silence.

***

“Stop,” Maze said, the first either of them had spoken in hours. Chloe pulled over on the deserted highway, glad for the opportunity to stretch her legs. She opened a bottle of water leaned against the car, watching Maze. She stood a few feet away, eyes closed, a look of concentration on her face. After a moment she opened them and pointed. “That way,” she said.

Chloe followed the direction of her finger, off into the desert. “That’s . . . there’s no road there.”

“He’s not far,” Maze said. “A few miles, I think.” She took the bottle of water from Chloe and took a long swallow.

Chloe squinted out into the desert. She’d let Maze take her this far. _Please let him be out there. Please let him be okay,_ she thought. As okay as he could be, if he’d been left in the desert to die. Aloud she said, “If I’d known we were going off-roading I’d have borrowed Dan’s truck.” Maze grunted and handed back the bottle of water. Chloe swallowed the last of it and tossed the empty bottle in the back seat as she got back in the car.

She did her best to keep to smoother stretches of rock and follow Maze’s directions, but it was hard to do both at the same time. She clutched the wheel, doing her best to keep the car steady. The landscape stretched ahead of them, sere and brown, dotted with Joshua trees and cacti. The road was out of sight behind them when Maze drew in a sharp breath through her teeth. “There,” she said.

Chloe peered ahead. She couldn’t see whatever Maze could, but she slowed the car to a crawl and followed the direction Maze had indicated. It wasn’t until they were a few yards away that the shape of his body resolved from the shimmer of heat, sprawled motionless in the dirt. 

Maze was out of the car before it had stopped moving. She dropped to her knees beside him. Chloe followed more slowly. He stirred under Maze’s touch, groaning, and Chloe felt a surge of relief that he was alive, but still she hung back, staring. Whoever had left him here had taken his shirt and his shoes but left him his pants. His skin was burned angry red and blistering, caked with sand, but that wasn’t what held her attention.

On his back were a pair of enormous wings, bright white despite the dirt that covered the rest of him, and shining with their own inner light. One lay half-folded under him, but the other was spread out, its span nearly as wide as he was tall, and Chloe could see very clearly that they were _attached_ , right where the crescent moon scars had been. Heedless of them, Maze rolled him into her lap, holding him half-upright against her chest.

“Decker.” Chloe barely heard her. “Decker! _Chloe!_ ”

Chloe tore her gaze from the wings and focused on her, on Lucifer’s battered face. His eyes were open now, his expression confused, disoriented. He held up one hand to shield his eyes from the sun, moved cracked lips as though trying to speak, but no sound came out.

“Water,” Maze said, when she had Chloe’s attention.

Chloe shook herself and got a fresh bottle of water from the car, still cool from sitting in the air conditioning. She knelt by his side, held it for him to drink. He took a tentative sip, then a longer one, his throat working desperately. His hand closed around the bottle, but Chloe pulled it away. “Slow down. You’ll make yourself sick.” This, she could handle. Heatstroke, dehydration, sunburn. His palms and forearms were scraped raw, dirt embedded in the abrasions as though he had fallen and tried to catch himself. They needed to get him cool, get him hydrated, get his injuries clean. The rest could wait. She held the bottle for him to drink, a few sips at a time, until he had finished half of it. 

He wiped his mouth with the back of one trembling hand. “What happened?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Don’t know.” His voice was hoarse, slurred. He coughed. “I was at the hospital.” He glanced at Chloe. “I was coming to see you. Someone hit me.” He raised a hand to the back of his head, wincing.

Chloe moved his hand and turned his head so she could see, found the spot swollen and tender but the skin unbroken. She added a concussion to her mental list of injuries. “You didn’t see who?” she asked, releasing him.

He shook his head, exchanging a look with Maze that Chloe couldn’t read. They both looked grim. Maze’s gaze flickered to his shoulders. “They’re back,” she said.

The tips of the wings moved, fluttering in the hot, still air. “I know.”

“What’s it mean?”

He turned his gaze skyward. For several long moments he didn’t say anything at all. “I don’t know, Maze.” He looked back at her, at Chloe, at Maze again. “I really don’t.”

***

Maze drove back to Los Angeles, the air conditioning blasting. Chloe sat in the back, giving Lucifer the passenger seat to accommodate his longer legs and—well. The enormous wings somehow folded nearly flat against his back, two white teardrops along his shoulderblades. Chloe passed the bottle of water to him. “Slowly,” she ordered. “No throwing up in my car.”

He chuckled weakly. “I wouldn’t dream of it, Detective,” he said. His teasing smile flashed, but he took small sips, waiting a few moments between each one, until he’d finished the bottle. When she was sure he was going to hold the water down, Chloe handed him a bottle of Gatorade.

He sipped it cautiously. “That is vile.”

“It’s sugar water,” Maze said, in a tone that suggested nothing could possibly be wrong with sugar water.

“It’s disgusting.”

Chloe rolled her eyes. “Just drink it. You need the electrolytes. You’ll feel better.” 

He grimaced but complied, managing half of it in small sips before he put it aside with a grimace and fell into an uneasy sleep, his head resting against the window. Chloe reached up and pressed a hand to his forehead, found his skin feverishly hot. His breath made a small cloud of steam on the glass.

 _He needs a hospital,_ she thought. But what hospital could they take him to? How do you explain a man with wings to medical professionals?

How could she explain a man with wings to herself? 

_Simple. He really is the Devil._ It was impossible, there was no such thing, but after everything she’d seen the last few days, the last few months, somehow, it had become the most likely explanation. _He was always telling me the truth._

He didn’t look like the Devil right now, though, with his hair disheveled and his skin blistered, lashes dark against flushed cheeks as he slept. He looked—well. Rather like a fallen angel. One whose fall had nearly broken him.

Maze met her gaze in the mirror. “He’ll be okay, Decker,” she said, but she couldn’t hide the worry in her voice. Chloe felt the car speed up. She sat back in her seat and watched the desert slip by, hoping that Maze was right.

***

A puff of warm air on his face brought Lucifer out of sleep to a pounding headache and raging thirst. A cool hand touched his cheek and he struggled to open heavy, gummed-up eyes. The detective’s face slowly came into focus. “Hey,” she said. “We’re home.” He was sitting in the front seat of her car, the parking garage under Lux stretching behind her. She reached across him and unbuckled his seat belt. “Do you think you can walk?”

It took a few moments for memory to catch up with him: The unseen assailant at the hospital, the desert, searing heat and blinding sunlight beating down. Maze and the detective, kneeling beside him in the dirt, his mind so muddled he’d thought they were a hallucination until water touched his lips and it was real, cool and wet and sweet relief.

His wings. Had that been real, too? He shrugged his shoulders, felt the whisper of feathers against his back, and his breath caught in something between a laugh and a sob.

“Take it easy,” Chloe murmured, her voice low and soothing. She wrapped an arm around his waist and helped him out of the car. He had to lean on her, and he was alert enough to be annoyed by his weakness but more grateful for the reassuring strength of her arm around him, joined a moment later by Maze on his other side. The car was parked right next to the lift, so he only had to manage a few steps, and then a few more once they’d reached the penthouse, until his trembling legs collapsed under him and he dropped onto the couch. He sank into the cushions and closed his eyes, his breath ragged. An arm hooked under his legs and lifted them onto the couch, turning him so he lay propped half-upright against the bolster. He was going to be annoyed later, he thought dimly; he was filthy, there would be sand everywhere, but right now he only cared that the air in the penthouse was blessedly cool and the setting sun shining through the windows held no heat when it hit his skin.

He was aware of movement around him, voices, too low for him to make out. He heard the lift chime. A moment later the cushion shifted under him and something cool and wet settled on his forehead. Water dripped down over his face, his neck. He let out a breath, his body going boneless with the relief of it. Had it been this bad, in Hell? He couldn’t remember, but he’d had the benefit then of angelic invulnerability, which seemed to have deserted him for the moment. More wet cloths settled on his chest, his belly. He blinked his eyes open again to find Chloe looking down at him. She smiled.

“There you are. How do you feel?”

“Like Hell.” He let out a raspy chuckle. “Literally.”

She handed him a glass of water, made sure his hands were steady enough for him to hold it himself. “Slowly,” she reminded him. He had to force himself not to drink it all down in one gulp. His hands still trembled. 

“Where’s Maze?” he asked. She’d been there in the desert, holding him up in her lap, half-carrying him to the car.

“Hospital. She went to check on Linda, let her know you’re okay.”

His chest tightened painfully at the thought of her, lying in that hospital bed, broken and bloody because of him. “How long was I gone?”

“Just about 36 hours.” She wet another washcloth, took his arm, and began gently scrubbing the dirt from the abrasions along his forearm. He winced. “Sorry,” she murmured, but she didn’t stop what she was doing. “You still don’t remember anything?”

He shook his head. Nothing helpful, anyway. He had staggered around in the desert for a while, tried to get his bearings, tried to use his wings, but he’d been too weak to get very far before the heat did him in.

“Detective . . .” He cradled the glass in his free hand. “We—we need to talk.”

“I know.” She turned his hand over in hers and went to work on the dirt embedded in his scraped palm.

“What I said in my message. I meant it. I want to tell you everything.”

She paused and looked up, raising an eyebrow. “Now?”

He shrugged. “It’s as good a time as any.”

She pressed her lips together, giving him the look she reserved for when he was being particularly thickheaded. “Lucifer, you’ve been missing for almost two days, Maze and I found you half-dead in the desert, you’re dehydrated, you have a concussion—”

“Angels can’t get concussions,” he mumbled. He didn’t think, anyway. Could they? He shouldn’t have been so weakened that he couldn’t make his way back home on his own, either. Nothing really made sense anymore. Maybe he did have a concussion.

She made an exasperated noise, took the empty water glass from his hand and got up to refill it. When she came back she had the full glass in one hand, a pitcher in the other, and a box of saltines under one arm. She tore open one of the sleeves of crackers and held it out to him. “Try to keep some of these down.”

He took one, dutifully, though the thought of food repulsed him. It felt dry and crumbly in his mouth, but to his surprise it eased some of the nausea cramping his belly. He ate a few more, finished another glass of water, licked the salt from his fingers. 

“I’m a detective, you know,” she said at length, apparently apropos of nothing. She finished getting the dirt out of the last of his injuries and set the damp washcloth aside in a pile with the others she had used. 

He frowned at her, puzzled. “I know.”

“I mean, I can figure it out. You have _wings._ ” She tilted her head, her eyes going to his shoulders. “It makes it a little hard to deny that you’re really—” She gestured, not quite able to say the word.

“The Devil,” he supplied.

“The Devil,” she agreed.

They were silent for a moment.

“Does that scare you?” he asked.

She cocked her head, studying him. Her expression was uncertain, maybe. Curious. But not afraid. “No.”

“Why?”

She shrugged. “Because I know you. And I know you’re not evil.”

He reached out and touched her face, a little wonderingly. “You really are—” he began, but caught himself before the word broke free. _A miracle._

“What?”

He shook his head, not wanting to begin there. Not knowing where _to_ begin. He was fighting exhaustion, but he needed to start somewhere, and he needed to do it now, or he never would. “There’s more you need to know. About me, and Charlotte Richards, and Amenadiel. Everything that’s happened the last few days. About, well, you.” He took a deep breath, the words spilling out and stumbling over each other. “I want you to know everything because I want you to have a choice. I want you to know what you’re getting into if you choose to continue to be my—my partner. My friend.” He stole a glance at her, found her looking thoughtful.

“Okay,” she said, nodding slowly.

“And I’m sorry,” he added. “I should have given you that choice a long time ago.”

She made a thoughtful sound. “You’re right,” she agreed, but her voice was gentle. She touched his cheek. “I forgive you.”

His eyes stung. He looked away. “Thank you.”

“I meant what I said, too, Lucifer. I forgive you your flaws and your mistakes. Just like you do mine.”

His throat ached. He still couldn’t look at her. “I’m not sure I deserve that.”

She touched his cheek again, her hand lingering for a moment. “It’s not about deserve. Friends forgive each other.”

He swallowed hard, but he couldn’t stop the rough noise that escaped his throat, or the hot tears that slipped from under his eyelids, stinging his burned cheeks. He wasn’t sure what forgiveness meant, or what it felt like, to give or to receive. Had sending his mother to build her own world been forgiveness? Was the sudden reappearance of his wings?

If it was, why did it hurt so much?

Chloe’s fingers combed through his hair. He felt sand cascade over his shoulders. “Shh. We can talk more later. You don’t have to tell me everything at once. I’m not going anywhere.”

He gave a jerky nod, not trusting his voice. 

“Good.” He heard the sound of water sloshing, and she pressed the glass back into his hands. “Drink a little more, then you can sleep.” 

Fatigue made him clumsy and he let her steady the glass while he drank and take it away when he had finished. He watched her stand, feeling as though the foot of space that opened between them when she did was as wide as the rift he’d created to send his mother away. He reached out and touched her, just to be sure.

“Detective—”

“Shh.” She took his hand and laid it next to his hip. A moment later he felt her weight settle at the end of the couch. She patted his leg. “I’m right here. Rest.”

With that reassurance, he let sleep take him.

***

It was dark outside when Lucifer woke. He was lying on the couch, still in his ruined trousers, his skin and hair gritty with dirt and his burned skin still radiating heat, but it felt more like mild fever than the blazing inferno of earlier. The flickering light from the muted TV showed him Chloe asleep on the other end of the couch, curled up under a blanket. Careful not to disturb her, he swung his feet to the floor and tested his weight on them. Still shaky, but he managed to stand without needing to hold onto anything for support. 

“Chloe says you can have some toast if you’re hungry,” Maze said. 

He started. He hadn’t seen her, sitting in the shadows of one of the armchairs with a whiskey glass resting on one updrawn knee, her eyes on the TV. He was hungry, but the painful pressure in his bladder and his desire for a shower and clean clothes were more pressing matters.

“How’s Linda?” he asked.

She turned her scowl on him. “A little better. Glad you’re okay. They said she can go home in a couple days.”

She was angry, but Lucifer wasn’t sure at what, or who. Him, most likely, though he didn’t know what he had done. He licked his lips. “That’s good, isn’t it?” he asked. “I’ll go see her tomorrow.”

She looked at him, evaluating, then gave a short nod, as though giving her consent. “She’d like that,” she said. Her eyes flicked to Chloe, still deeply asleep, though neither of them had made an effort to modulate their voices. “Did you tell her?”

He followed her gaze. “A little. I’ll tell her the rest when she wakes up.” He hesitated, wondering if that was the reason for her anger. They lived together, after all. Chloe learning the truth—all of it—had implications for Maze, too. He was trying to do a better job of remembering that. Of taking her feelings into account. “Do you want to be there when I do?”

She shook her head. “I’ll talk to her after.”

“Very well.” He turned away.

“I’m not cutting them off again,” Maze called after him.

He froze halfway up the steps to the bedroom, suddenly, acutely aware of the wings folded against his back. Five years was the blink of an eye in his immortal life, but it had been long enough for him to adjust to living without them, for the phantom sensation of limbs that could carry him into the air to fade—or so he had thought. In less than a day, their weight had become so natural he had almost forgotten them. Now they spasmed, trembling, as if of their own accord.

“I haven’t asked you to.”

“Good.” He heard the clink of ice against glass. “Don’t.”

He retreated to the bathroom, where he relieved himself and then leaned on the vanity, stretched the wings wide and stared at himself in the mirror.

The man who looked back at him resembled neither the scarred, red-eyed horror who delivered nightmares to the guilty nor the devilishly handsome playboy he’d fashioned himself into. His hair was wild, his sunburned skin raw and peeling, his expression and his posture uncertain. _What am I?_ he wondered. _Angel or Devil?_

Both? Neither?

He opened them to their full span, so wide he had to extend them behind him instead of out to the sides. He remembered the night Maze had cut them off, the hot blood dripping down his back and the triumph that dulled the pain. He’d cursed his father in word and in deed, and done so again when he’d burned them on that same beach, reveling in his brother’s horror as the flames consumed them. And now they were back, suddenly and inexplicably, and he felt caught between joy and gut-wrenching, nauseating fear. Amenadiel had manipulated him into desiring them once before and he had fought it—perhaps the only time in his life he’d fought his desires—because giving in meant acceding to their father’s wishes, accepting his place in the celestial order. But feeling the strength of taut muscle stretching out from his back, the play of air through the feathers, he couldn’t deny that some part of him had, indeed, longed to assume his form.

But he didn’t know what they meant, or what they would cost him, and that terrified him to his core. Everything had a price. He knew that better than anyone.

He shook himself, letting the wings fold in on themselves and disappear against his back. Too many questions, and he wasn’t sure what he wanted the answers to be. He stepped into the shower and let the cool stream of water flow over him, wishing it could wash away his fears along with the sand he’d brought back with him from the desert.

***

Lucifer was gone when Chloe woke up, sometime after midnight, the cushions at other end of the couch dented from where he’d been lying. Maze was still curled up in one of the armchairs, watching the James Bond marathon they’d turned on when she’d gotten there.

“He’s in the kitchen,” Maze said, when she noticed Chloe was awake.

Chloe nodded, scooting to the edge of the couch and dropping her feet to the floor. In the dim light from the TV and the bar and the moon shining through the windows she could see Maze’s eyes were shadowed, her face drawn. 

“When was the last time you slept?” Chloe asked her. 

She shrugged, finally taking her eyes off the TV. “I’m fine, Decker.”

“You don’t look fine.” Between Linda almost dying and Lucifer vanishing for two days, Chloe couldn’t imagine how Maze could possibly be fine. She hesitated. “I know you don’t . . . really do feelings. But if you want to talk—”

Something like sadness flashed across Maze’s face. “Go talk to Lucifer,” she said. “He’ll explain everything. If you still want to talk to me after—”

“Maze.” Chloe waited for her to take her eyes off the TV and look at her. “Of course I still want to talk to you. Whatever Lucifer has to tell me has no bearing on you and me.”

Maze looked uncertain. “Really?”

“Really. Tribe, remember?”

A ghost of a smile crossed Maze’s face, and her eyes suddenly looked bright. She sipped from the tumbler in her hand to hide the emotion trying to break through. “Thanks, Decker,” she said when she had finished, her voice steady again. Chloe dropped a hand to her friend’s shoulder on her way to the kitchen.

***

Lucifer was sitting perched on a barstool at the kitchen island, eating toast. Chloe paused in the doorway and watched him, taken by the incongruity of the sight of him. He had taken a shower and changed into a pair of pajama pants—black silk, of course, she wouldn’t have expected anything different—but foregone a shirt or a robe, leaving his wings free. They were loosely folded, hanging over the low back of the stool and shining in the dim golden light of the room. She had thought they were gorgeous when she had seen them (or what she thought had been them, fakes convincing enough to fool even their owner) mounted on a rack in an auction hall—but that had been nothing compared to seeing them on his back, _alive_ , their power palpable even at rest.

She must have made a noise, because he turned around, one foot dropping to the floor. “Detective,” he said, his face breaking into a smile that she barely registered. The wings furled, folding in on themselves until they vanished against his back, leaving two crescent moons along his shoulderblades that she wouldn’t have seen if she hadn’t known to look. Chloe felt her mouth fall open.

“How—” She stepped further into the room and reached for him, then drew back, remembering his reaction when she’d tried to touch his scars. She let her hand fall, contented herself with just looking at them, tracing the long narrow shape with her eyes, shimmering and transparent. “How as that possible?”

“Angel wings, Detective,” he said, as though that should explain it. Seeing that she wouldn’t be satisfied with that answer, he added, “I suppose you could say they exist in multiple dimensions. They’re flesh and blood, but that’s not all they are.”

“And that’s what lets you—?” She gestured.

“Among other things.” 

She extended her hand again. She couldn’t help it. “Can I—can I touch them?”

He hesitated, then nodded. “All right.” They reappeared, opened and then folded more like a bird’s wings than like an impossibly compact origami fan that could disappear into itself. She ran her hand lightly along the upper edge of one, then the other. They felt surprisingly light under her fingertips, almost delicate. She had taken Trixie to a bird sanctuary last summer, and Chloe had gotten to hold an owl that was being rehabilitated while her daughter stroked its back. His wings felt the way she remembered the large bird had, strength and fragility wound together, in tension with one another. He shivered under her touch.

“Why would you cut these off?” she breathed, unable to stop herself from asking the question. She looked at his face, saw a mixture of anger and grief there. “Why would you want to destroy them?”

He avoided returning her gaze. “They belonged to my father.” He shrugged. “They were a reminder of everything I wasn’t, could never be. The son he really wanted.”

His answer squeezed her heart. _They belonged to my father._ He’d felt so controlled, so used, so _owned_ by his father that he’d maimed himself to feel free of him. “Lucifer . . .” She touched his chin, turning him to face her. “They’re _yours_. You don’t belong to your parents. Or anyone but you.” It was something she’d tried to teach Trixie, early and often: she wanted her daughter to feel like her life, and her choices, belonged to her. It was why she’d been so enraged when she’d come home and found her mother making her daughter up like a 1980s prom queen. It wasn’t the makeup or the costume or even the audition. It was the memory of standing in her place, of feeling so swept up in her mother’s desires for her that she had let herself be drawn along because she couldn’t hear her own over it. It was not ever wanting Trixie to feel that way.

“It’s your choice,” she said after a moment. “What you do with them. But they’re _yours._ No one else’s. They don’t determine who you are.”

He made a sound something like a laugh, but it was raw, sharp-edged. One hand curled into a fist, his knuckles going white. “I just—I wish I knew _why_. Or _how_. I destroyed them. They were _gone,_ Detective. I watched them burn.”

She leaned on the counter, studying him thoughtfully. “You said they exist in multiple dimensions. Maybe they were only destroyed in this one.” Not that she understood at all how that was supposed to work, but it seemed as good an explanation as any.

He just shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. Perhaps. No angel has tried to sever their wings before. But I was so sure . . .” he trailed off, his gaze distant.

She climbed onto the stool beside him and touched his shoulder lightly, not wanting to spook him. He blinked at her, eyes slowly coming back into focus. She smiled. “I’m glad you’re feeling well enough to contemplate divine mysteries,” she said.

That coaxed a genuine laugh out of him, though he sobered quickly. “Yes. I believe I owe you my thanks, Detective. For finding me. I’m not sure I would have made it back on my own.

“You should be thanking Maze. She led us right to you. I just drove.” 

He opened his mouth, closed it. “Of course,” he murmured, looking chagrinned.“I should have—” He broke off, and Chloe didn’t prod. She’d known they had a long history together, but she realized that she could never quite appreciate just how long, or how complicated. Millennia together, in Hell. She couldn’t fathom that much time, that much history with another person.

“She’s no danger to you,” Lucifer said suddenly, startling her out of her thoughts. “Or your offspring.”

She blinked. “What?”

“Maze,” he clarified.

“Why would I think—?” She frowned. “Oh. Because she’s—” She broke off, not sure, suddenly, what word would describe the kind of being she was.

“A demon.”

“Huh.” She glanced back toward the living room, where she’d left Maze watching James Bond. “That . . . explains a lot, actually.” She turned back at him. “I know she wouldn’t hurt us. It never occurred to me she would.”

He studied her for a moment, looking bemused. “You really don’t mind, do you?” he asked. 

She couldn’t help grinning, remembering Maze working the room at the grieving gathering at Starfield Academy, her odd but sincere overtures of friendship. “She’s had my back a time or two.” 

He smiled. “There’s no one better,” he agreed. He cocked his head to one side, eyes narrowing as he studied her. “I must say, Detective, you’re . . . taking all of this rather well.”

She shrugged, leaning one elbow on the counter and resting her chin on her fist. “I’ve had some time to think.”

“About?”

“About things I’ve seen. Things I’ve seen you do. Everything that happened the last few days with Charlotte Richards—you’re going to have to explain that part to me—but . . . I think I’ve known for a long time. I just didn’t want to.”

“I see.”

“That’s not to say I won’t completely freak out after it all sinks in.” She grinned.

He didn’t return the smile. “You wouldn’t be the first. When I told Linda it was rather . . . traumatic.”

Chloe nodded. So Linda knew. That made sense. She studied him, her brow furrowing. “How did you convince her?” she asked.

He seemed to shrink in on himself a little. He fiddled with a burnt bit of crust on the plate in front of him. “I showed her my face. My other face.”

A sudden flash of memory seized her, of a half-glimpsed reflection in a dark warehouse. Red eyes and a scarred face, and a young woman huddled on the floor at his feet, weeping.

“I’ll show you, if you want,” he went on, sounding as though he had to force the words out.

She shook her head. “You don’t have to.” She hesitated. “I’ve seen it.”

“You have?”

“That case with the pickup artist. I saw your reflection that night in the warehouse. Before I shot you.”

“And you still didn’t believe me?”

“I shot you and you bled.” She spread her hands. “I convinced myself that it was a trick of the light, that I hadn’t really seen—” Glowing red eyes, the face of a demon. The Devil himself.

He was nodding slowly. “Yes, that’s—well. When I said you make me vulnerable, Detective, I meant it literally. I wasn’t lying when I said I’m immortal, but when I’m around you I’m—I’m not.”

She frowned. “Does that . . . does that happen with some people?”

He shook his head.

“So I’m . . . like your kryptonite?” That didn’t sound good.

He looked uncomfortable. “Well, yes, sort of.” He drew another long breath, as though steeling himself, and then said, “You’re—well. A miracle.”

Chloe’s first response was to laugh. Loudly. She clapped a hand over her mouth to muffle the sound. Her mother used to call her that, when she was feeling sentimental—usually because she’d had too much to drink. Her father had said so, too, more earnestly and warmly. She knew that they had almost given up trying when Penelope had finally gotten pregnant with her. _Our little miracle,_ they had said, and it always made Chloe uncomfortable, because she didn’t want to be anyone’s miracle, she just wanted to be herself.

He waited for her outburst to pass. When she had gotten herself under control he said, very quietly, “Your parents wanted to have a child, and they couldn’t. And then one night they met my brother Amenadiel.” He crushed the burnt toast into crumbs and pushed them into a pile on his plate. “Our father had sent him to give his blessing so they could have the child they wanted.” He looked up then, met her eyes. “You.”

“Oh.” Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t this. “Does that happen often?”

“No.”

“Oh. I see.” She didn’t, though. She had no idea what to do with this information, or whether to believe it. She believed everything else he had told her, though, so what was one more thing? If she was suddenly entangled with celestial beings, why not believe she had a touch of the celestial herself? He was still talking, she realized, and she clamped down on her rising hysteria and tried to focus on what he was saying.

“It’s why my powers don’t work on you. It’s why—” His voice caught. “It’s why I left. After you were poisoned.”

“Oh,” she said, yet again, because she didn’t know what else to say. “Why?”

He bowed his head, trying and failing to hide the anguish on his features. “Because you weren’t given a choice. I was—I was trying to give it back to you.”

She frowned. “A choice? About what?”

“Me.”

Chloe studied him, trying to make sense of what he was telling her. _You weren’t given a choice. About me._ The pieces clicked into place, and her frown deepened to a scowl.

“You think,” she said slowly, “that because I’m a miracle I didn’t have a choice about having feelings for you?”

He shifted uncomfortably. “Yes.”

“Lucifer, that’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

He blinked. “It is?”

“You _really_ think that the only reason I’m here is to—what, fall in love with you? Make you fall in love with me?”

“You’re in love with me?”

She shut her mouth with a click. She hadn’t meant to say that, and the uncertainty and hope shining on his face almost undid her. “Maybe. I don’t know. That’s not what we’re talking about right now.” His face fell, and she ruthlessly crushed the desire to take him in her arms that welled up. She crossed them instead. “Well? Is that what you think? That I”m just here for you?”

“I—”

When he hesitated, she shook her head. “You really think you’re the center of the universe, don’t you?”

“What? No, I—”

“Leaving aside the question of whether I’m really a miracle—because I’m not convinced of that—if you’re not going to give your father more credit, at least give _me_ some. My existence didn’t begin and end with you.” She heard the anger in her voice and hated herself for turning it on him, because she knew he didn’t deserve it, not really. Not like this. He was just responding to a lifetime of expecting to be manipulated, of seeing every good thing in his life as a trap, and he’d been trying to protect her from all that.

“Of course,” he said, his voice low, contrite. “I never meant—”

Chloe sighed, the anger leeching away. “I know you didn’t.” She reached over and placed her hand on top of his.

He turned his hand over, placing his palm against hers and lacing their fingers together. “I’m sorry,” he said, keeping his eyes on their linked hands. “My whole life—my father has either been manipulating me or punishing me, and half the time I don’t know if the choices I’ve made were really my own, or he’d engineered them. I never meant—I only wanted to give you back what I thought had been taken from you.”

She sighed again. Choice. Free will. He may think he’s the center of the universe, but he’d hurt himself to try to give her the thing he valued most. “By pushing me away.” 

“Yes.” He bowed his head. “Which I realize now was probably not the best way to go about it.”

She surprised herself by laughing. “Probably not.” she agreed.

“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I should have told you as soon as I knew. I wanted to give you a choice and instead I . . . I made one for you.”

She nodded slowly. He had, but also . . . “You were trying to protect me. And yourself.” She squeezed his hand. “You were doing your best.”

“Yes,” he said, his voice husky. “But I hurt you.”

“Yeah,” she agreed. She smiled. “But I got over it. Everyone makes mistakes, Lucifer. Friends forgive each other. No more going backward, okay?”

He returned her smile with a hopeful one of his own. “No more going backward,” he agreed. 

***

There was more to say, more to talk about, but he would never be able to tell her everything in one night. He was wavering on his barstool, still injured and weak from his ordeal in the desert, and Chloe was exhausted herself. There would be time for her questions in the coming days and weeks. Right now he needed sleep. They both did.

He let her steer him back through the living room to his bedroom, leaning on her for support, though not as heavily as before. Maze had dozed off in her chair, ice melting in her glass on the end table. He pushed the comforter to the floor and and slid in under the sheet, sighing as the cool silk settled on his skin.

Chloe perched on the edge of the mattress. “Are you going to be all right?”

“As all right as I ever am.”

She snorted. “That’s encouraging.”

“Don’t worry, Detective, I’ll soon be back to annoying you into solving cases.” He hesitated, then added, “I mean, if you still want—”

“Of course I still want you to be my partner, don’t be an idiot.” She ran her fingers through his hair and he closed his eyes, letting himself be soothed. He turned onto his belly and sank deeper into the pillows. Chloe rubbed circles on his back, the way Trixie liked when she wasn’t feeling well. He made a little sound of pleasure, not so much licentious as kittenish. She found her fingers combing through feathers. 

“I just wish I knew what they meant,” he murmured, half asleep.

“Maybe it doesn’t matter.”

He turned his head and opened one eye to look drowsily at her. “What do you mean?”

“I mean maybe it doesn’t matter,” she repeated. “Any of it. Your wings, me being a—a miracle. It just is. We can do what we want with it. Who cares if it’s what your dad wants, or expects? Why think about him at all?”

He let out a little huff of a laugh. “Free will, you mean.”

“Yes.”

He laid his head back down. “I don’t know if I can. Not think about him.”

She pulled the sheet up over his shoulder, and pressed a kiss to his temple. “Maybe just try.”

He mumbled sleepy assent. His breathing slowed and deepened, but Chloe stayed where she was, running her fingers through dark hair and bright white feathers. If he was dreaming, she hoped he dreamed of flying.

***

_Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,_  
_the world offers itself to your imagination,_  
_calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —_  
_over and over announcing your place_  
_in the family of things._


End file.
